Musings of Vermont Shetland shepherd with occasional postings by her sheep.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

End of Finn Babies for this year

Sunday, April 13th at oh my gosh it's early (read 30 minutes after midnight) was when Rachel started her lambing. Luckily for us, Tim was out feeding Ebby her bottle when he heard a baby crying and the sound wasn't coming from the lambing jugs or the "baby and me" pen. He stopped feeding to glance over and see Rachel mostly inside the sliding door of the llama annex with a newly birthed baby. He gently nudged her all the way inside and closed the door behind him. No Shetlands are going to steal these last Finns if he has anything to do with it! He then came back in the house to give me a holler and went back out to finish bottle feeding Ebby.

The first baby was a mostly white little guy with brown markings. He was pretty big looking and when we weighed him, we found out that he was 7 lbs (that's about the weight of Ebby now at one week old!)

The next baby presented normally for all intents and purposes, but for her front legs weren't fully stretched out in the "full Superman" position that I'm most comfortable with. I could reach in and feel the right leg bent back just a bit and wiggled it forward. Then momma gave another great push and out came this beauty. A girl, with amazingly beautiful markings. Mostly black with a white head, panda bear eyes, black around her lips (like she was painted by a clown and black tips on her ears. She also has a black spot on the top of her head, a white spot on her side (which you can see in the picture) as well as stripes of white on the bottom of her legs. This picture just doesn't do her justice. She weighed in at 6 lbs.

Tim was pooped, so he went to bed and I stayed out for another hour waiting to see if she'd give us triplets. No more babies came along, and truthfully, I was only expecting twins, but keep in mind I wasn't expecting quads from Love either!

They were moved to a lambing jug and are doing exceptionally well.

And so passes the end of the birthing of Finn babies for the year. May the Shetlands be ever so fruitful and ever so kind in doling them out so evenly spaced as the Finns did, where there was only once when we needed two lambing jugs erected (only because Helle stole one of Love's lambs).